Blog Post Assignment #5

Here is your Week 6 blog assignment. This should be posted on your individual blog by Friday, September 30th at 5pm. The title of the post should be "Last Name Blog Post #5". A good blog post will reference discussions from class as well as the assigned readings for that week (and from earlier weeks if applicable). All blog posts should be in complete sentences and show evidence of real thought. It's pretty easy to tell if you wrote it at 4:55pm on Friday. You don't have to answer all of the questions listed under each number, but you should attempt to answer the questions fully. You may write in paragraph essay form, or you can respond to each question listed by number.

This week's blog post will allow you to critically analyze and respond to Christine Rosen's article "Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism." Critical analysis and response is an important skill to learn regardless of the discipline because it requires the you to understand an article's argument well enough to be able to identify and explain it, but then also to provide your own argument about the article. A critical response goes beyond the "I agree/disagree" to "I agree/disagree because..." This post should be between 250 and 500 words. Since this is a short assignment and a long article, you may want to just focus on one aspect of Rosen's argument (as in, just discussing networking, relationships on Facebook, etc).



Some questions to consider for your critical analysis (you don't have to answer all of these, these are just questions to help you think through a critical analysis):
-What is Rosen's overall argument? You can also narrow this down to her argument in a particular section.

-Who is the intended audience for this article? (You may need to do a little sleuthing on The New Atlantis, which is where this article was originally published).  Who is the excluded audience (as in, who is Rosen not addressing here)?

-What do you know about Rosen? Is she credible? Why or why not?

-Is Rosen's article objective, or is she biased? If you believe she is, what in the article makes you believe that? What is her particular bias?
-What evidence does Rosen use to support her claim? Is this evidence credible, why or why not? What additional evidence would help strengthen her claim?

-Does Rosen address everything, or does she leave important analytical aspects out? If so, what is she neglecting to address?
-Overall, do you agree or disagree with Rosen's article (or part of it)? Why? Explain what you are responding to and justify why your perspective may be correct.